Anti-Gravity Bicycle Wheel

I created this exhibit by taking apart a bicycle wheel I found and inserting a dowel into the axis, fixing it in place with pieces of wood on each side. A string hooks onto one end of the dowel so that you can suspend it in the air while spinning. I wanted this to be an exhibit that engaged users in thinking about momentum and how it can work in surprising ways.

This exhibit definitely falls under the "moment of realization" category--my intention was to surprise the user when the axis of the bicycle wheel doesn't drop to a vertical position as one would expect, but instead remains horizontal. While this doesn't work very well in the prototype due to a number of factors (relatively weak wooden dowel, heavy body of the wheel itself, overly long dowel) I am confident that I could get it to work much better upon a second iteration knowing what I know now. My hope was that this phenomenon is strange enough that users will be intrigued and want to learn more about angular momentum, and in a later prototype I would include a label giving a bit of background information for curious users once they are drawn in. Basically, the ideal interaction would be for the user to first spin the wheel and then to have had their curiosity so piqued that they couldn't resist but to read the sign. 

To me, this seems like a compelling exhibit. However, there's often no telling what users will think. My hope is that it's not too complicated for younger users, but I must go through iterative user testing to properly answer this question. Nonetheless, I am confident that I can complete a much higher-functioning prototype for this exhibit.